Rates are levied in England and Wales called Carmel" RATES, which Noncon formists are required to pay as well as churchmen. In Ireland the churches are kept in repair out of funds in the hands ' of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which are derived from extinguished sees and other sources.
The principle of the state maintaining an exclusive system of education in ac cordance with the principles and doctrines of the Established Church has been par tially abandoned both in England and Ireland. The parliamentary grants for education are enjoyed by dissenters as well as churchmen. In Ireland the state supports schools which are established on the plan of not permitting the inculcation of the peculiar doctrines of any religious body as a part of the regular course of teaching, but religious instruction is given by the ministers of different reli gious bodies to the scholars of each deno mination separately. In the government plan for founding provincial colleges in Ireland the same principle has been adopted. Lastly, parliament has annu ally voted funds for the maintenance of an institution (Maynooth) for the educa tion of Roman Catholic priests ; and in 1845 this annual vote was converted into a fixed annual payment.
The King and Queen of England must be members of the Established Church, and may not marry a Roman Catholic ; but the only other offices from which Roman Catholics are now excluded are the offices of guardians and justices of the United Kingdom, or Regent of the same, the office of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain or Ireland, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the office of High Commissioner to the General Assem bly of the Church of Scotland. With these exceptions the members of the cabi net council, privy councillors, the judges and magistrates, all offices in the state and in the army and navy, may be filled by Roman Catholics or dissenters from the Established Church. The repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts opened the Municipal Corporations to Roman Catho lies and Dissenters. Jews are the only class of persons who are excluded from the Houses of Lords and Commons, and from municipal corporations ; but a bill under the superintendence of the govern ment is at present passing through par liament which contains a form of oath to be taken by Jews who are elected to municipal offices in corporate boroughs. There are at present instances of persona ot the Jewish religion who fill the office of high sheriff, and are in the commission of the peace. [Jaws.] The connection between the Church and State has been brought within com paratively narrow limits by the course of recent legislation. The Established Church is in possession of revenues from land, a large part of which are enjoyed under the old law of Frankalmoigne. [FRANKALHOIGNE.] The clergy also re ceive certain customary payments for the performance of marriages, christen ings, and interment& Its form of polity is also guaranteed by the State. Parlia ment may alter the distribution of the pro perty of the Church, as it has recently done by uniting and suppressing bishop rics, creating new sees, abolishing sine cures, and disposing of some parts of the revenues of the church for other church purposes [ECCLESIASTICAL COMMIS SIONERS; BISHOPRIC] ; but it has not yet sanctioned the diversion of the revenues of the Church to other purposes, though it has been on the point of doing so in the case of the revenues of the Established Church in Ireland.
On the 25th of April, 1836, Lord Mor peth, who was then Secretary for Ireland, brought in a measure which contained a clause known as the "Appropriation Clause," by which it was intended, after supplying the legitimate wants of the Irish Church, to apply 97,6121. out of the
revenues of the Church to the moral and religious instruction of the Irish people. The principle of the appropriation clause was affirmed by the House of Commons after three nights discussion, by a majority of 300 to 261. In the House of Lords the clause was rejected by 138 against 47.
The clergy of the Established Church constitute a distinct order. [Cooney.] No person can be ordained to holy orders who does not subscribe to the Liturgy and the Thirty-nine Articles, which latter com prehend his assent to the doctrine of the king's supremacy. No person can hold any benefice without taking the oath of canonical obedience to the bishop. The constitution of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Trinity College, Dublin, is such as to exclude persons who do not belong to the Established Church from a full participation in the advantages of these endowed seats of learning. IUNivossrry.] In reference to the history of the Esta blished Church in Ireland, it will be suf ficient here to quote the fifth article of the act for the Union of Great Britain with Ireland (40 Geo. III. c. 67), passed July 2nd, 1800. which enacts, "That it be the fifth article of union, that the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland; and that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said united church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law es tablished for the church of England ; and that the continuance and preservation of the said united church, as the established church of England and Ireland, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the union." There is this, amongst other peculiari ties in the Established Church in Ireland, that it is the church of only about a tenth part of the population. When a special census of the population was taken in 1834, with the object of ascertaining the religious persuasion of the people, it was found that out of a total population of 7 954,760 there were— Proportion per cent Roman Catholics 6,436,060 80.9 Established Church 853,160 10.7 Presbyterians . . 643,658 8.4 Other Dissenters . 21,882 • 2 In England and Wales, on the con trary, the majority of the population be long to the Established Church, and it is not placed in that anomalous position which the church occupies in Ireland. There is no authentic account of the num ber of persons who belong to the Esta blished Church in England and Wales, and the number of marriages which are celebrated at dissenting places of worship is not an index of the numbers of the po pulation who are dissenters ; but it is Indicative of the fact that the church has a considerable bold on the respect of a large in ass even of those who do not belong to it, while its rites and cere monies and doctrines contain so little to repulse men who are not churchmen, that we find in 1842, out of 118,825 mar riages, only 6200 (representing a popula tion of 806,000, out of a total of nearly sixteen millions) were celebrated in regis tered places of worship, under the act of the 6 & 7 Win. I V. c. 86 ; and in only 2357 cases was the ceremony celebrated without any religious service. The num. ber of dissenting places of worship regis tered pursuant to 6 & 7 Wm. IV. is 2232, while the number of marriages at each place does not on an average amount to three in the course of a year.